CAN MY EMPLOYER TAKE MY PAY IF I GET A TRAFFIC TICKET?

Phrased better they can cancel a safety/ compliance bonus. But they can not withhold compensation you have earned.

 

Are they paying for the ticket or are you? A lot of cities that use photo radar are now starting to send them to companies. Especially trucking companies. If this is the case, where you've gotten a photoradar or red light camera ticket, the company has two options, they can ignore it or they can pay it. If they pay it, the ticket will show information about the truck, unless you slip seat, they will know who was driving, so technically they could pay it and back charge you. Or they could give it to you to pay, and notify the municipality that issued the ticket who the driver was, at that point the municipality would come after you.

 

So I know your big on this, so can I come to work for you? I'm really looking forward to ripping some part off every week until you fire me, I mean, you've already said it's the cost of doing business, so $500 here, $500 there, $500 each week. I've got a dozen friends who are former SWIFT drivers, would you hire all of us? How long will you stay in business? How long will your insurance insure you?

 

Move on to the next job

 

You're either epically desperate to work at an outfit like that or really dumb.

 

Welcome to owning a business. That's why you try not to hire morons. Can I charge you for every mistake you make as my employer?? Or are those mistakes "just part of the job, driver"?

Bent a bumper on a truck? "Oops, that'll be $500 driver".

My paycheck is gonna be a couple days late because your bank was having some crazy internal issues? "Oops, that'll be $500 boss man."

 

Right. Mega carriers do the meat in the seat approach. They’re self insured to a certain amount, and they make their money on leasing trucks and the Dumb and Dumber program. They don’t pay much because they have to pay for someone to hold the nondriver hands.

I’d wager that Mr Ridgeline has probably during an interview, sent drivers home when they showed the tendency to want to have those stupid “what if” conversations.

“What if I get a ticket for 15 over...would you fire me?”
“What if I roll the truck?”
“What happens if you catch me selling fuel?”

 

Well there is a huge difference between abuse of a driver and the negligence of the driver.

In the ops case, the owner takes money out of their earnings for not passing a dot inspection, traffic ticket and I bet being late or missing appointment times - ALL BAD THINGS.

This is different from being a driver who is destructive.

And as I said cheap pos owners like those the op described should never be allowed to be in business in the first place, they have screwed all of us.

 

What about the company insurance? Do they have a say-so in the matter? Unless you are an O/O, I think companies are so governed by insurance, they have no choice, if a driver gets a ticket in a company truck and rates go up, who absorbs that? Not the company, if they can help it. It may also be a deterrent, although, a pretty crummy way of doing something. With the way the world is today , it doesn't surprise me at all.
I tell ya', when I surrendered my CDL when I got my Co. license, the guy said, "are you sure you want to give up your CDL? You have to start over if you do". I said, "look pal, I'd rather stock soup cans at Walmart than drive a truck today, let's do this thing". And with that, he pushed the button, and 35 years of trucking came to an end. Good riddance.